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CatH Post 54
In CatH Post 54 Clear is sitting in the Command Centre watching Captain Icer giving a lecture to her crew, all ghostly holograms. Clear just sits, bored, eating nuts until suddenly she sees Note. Then Hope and the purple-skinned man from her previous dream in CatH Post 53. She realises that he is actually Lord Sootik Kassuin and he keeps asking where she has been. In her dream she follows Icer out of the room and into a new room where she sees bacta tanks and The Black Cloak. When she wakes up she follows her steps in the dream and finds the same room where the tanks are real and the cloak is revealed to be Aellisin Koure. Post Dream-to-Reality Clear sits in the audience. There are ghosts all around her. One ghost looked like he was about to sit on her but, blessedly, chose the seat behind her. She watches the people talking. She can't hear them so she has to just watch them. After some time of failed attempts at lip-reading, Clear resorts to eating a back of nuts. She peels the shell and scoffs the innards. After a while she has a hearty pile of empty shells, which she then, with as much precision as she can muster in her lazy state of mind, tosses them at Icer. The empty shell slips straight through the woman and boinks on the console screen behind her, which Clear assumes was probably lit up with interesting images during the original meeting but now just has Mother's face watching her disapprovingly. Clear groans with boredom. Note: "Don't be glum Clear." Clear's attention snaps to the screen. But it's still Mother. Clear: "That was weird. I could have sworn..." Note: "Swore that you saw me?" Now the image on the screen is definitely of Note and not Mother. He is just as she remembers. Note, the former A.I. of The Hopeless - destroyed because he went crazy. Clear almost falls from her chair as she jumps to her feet. Purple Man: "Relax..." She looks down. In her seat is now the purple-skinned man. He's eat her bag of nuts. Purple Man: "Where have you been?" Clear: '"How're you ''here!? The real world!? And Note!" She turns. Note is gone. So is Mother. 'Hope: '"What is the real world, Clear?" Clear turns to see Hope sitting with the ghosts too. She is leaning back in her seat with her feet up on the back of the lower row of chairs, legs poking through the ghost heads. She points from her feet, along her body and to her chest. ''' Hope: "Does this position look familiar?" Clear: "Lying in the Dream Viewer... I'm dreaming aren't I? But it felt so... real a moment ago." Purple Man: "What is real? What is the truth?" Clear: '''"You're in my seat, eating my snacks. That's the truth, you swine." '''Purple Man: "Where have you been?" Clear: "You ask me that but I don't know what you mean. I haven't been anywhere." Purple Man: "When I woke you up, you had been somewhere. Where did you go?" Something splats at Clear's feet. She looks at Hope. She's tossing eggs from a basket and onto the floor. Clear: "The place with the eggs?" Purple Man: "Where have you been?" Clear frowns. Clear: "When did you wake me up?" She looks at him. Looks at his skin. That colour... Clear: "Kassuin. You woke me up." '' The Purple Man is now Lord Kassuin, the purple-skinned alien Æon Knight that she'd met so long ago now. He had come aboard The Hopeless and woke her from her dream...'' Clear: "Not a dream..." Lord Kassuin: '"''Not a dream..." '' He still eats her nuts, even though he now appears in all of his refined, lordly glory, creating a very peculiar image of a stately alien eating a bag of simple nuts in a very clumsy fashion. She turns and walks out of the Command Centre. She following a ghost. She's following Icer. The Captain turns to her, as though she can see the salmitton, and then continues on. Clear doesn't look back but she knows that Lord Kassuin, Hope and Mother are all following her. Maybe even others. Hope's crew. Clear's crew. Is Note back there too? Her entire history. Her father...? Then they all disappear suddenly and Clear is left looking at a door. Something else is behind her. She turns. The Black Cloak. But now she isn't afraid. She knows who this is. The cloak welcomes her to the room, opening the door for her. She steps inside.'' '' Life pods. Bacta tanks. Figures inside them. It's the Black Cloak. In each tank...'' -- She snaps awake with a whimper of protest. She's slumped in her chair in the Command Centre. Her nuts have fallen all over the floor. The ghost meeting has adjourned and she's quite alone save for one or two technicians that are doing something on the console down at the front of the room. '''Clear: "Mother? Did I... go anywhere in my sleep?" Mother: '''"No. You drooled a little." '''Clear: "That... that Dream Viewer... I'm using it too much." Mother: '"As I have told you..." ''Clear gets up. '''Clear: "I have to be somewhere..." Mother: "And the mess?" Clear doesn't answer, she just walks. She remember the path that dream Icer had taken. A path that Clear knows but doesn't remember outside of the dream. From a period of her life when her mind was not her own. The door. She enters. This is real life. She's sure of it. And there they are. No Hope. No Kassuin. No Note. Just the bacta tanks with figures inside them. Except one. One is open. The Black Cloak is loose. ' The Black Cloak:' "I wondered when you'd find me..." Clear: "Aellisin. How... what is this!?" Category:Post Category:CatH Post